What were the games you played as a kid?

 There a variety of games that we played and as we got older the games changed.  The first game I remember playing, ( I was eight years old)  is war with my brother (Terry) and out friends (Terry, Jerry, Tub and Ike).  We lived next to a creek and they had come along and dredged the ditch and made mounds of dirt along the ditch.  This was our play area for the whole summer, digging “fox holes” and setting traps, we would play for hours… It was a dream come true for the boys and by the end of the summer we had explored the dirt piles and had forts everywhere.  

All of the kids in our family were members of our local 4-H club.  Ray Bonson was our leader and it seems like we met once a week at the Bay Township Hall.  Before the meeting we would play games, softball and Red Rover.  Softball has not changed, we played in a cow pasture across the Route 53 from Bay Township Hall.  It really was a cow pasture, we had to climb through the fence and watch where you step… We also played Red Rover…  The game is played between two lines of players (usually called the “East” or “West” team, although this does not relate to the actual relative location of the teams), usually positioned approximately thirty feet apart with hands or arms linked together. The game starts when the first team, in this example the “East” team, calls a player out, by saying or singing a line like “Red rover, red rover, send [player on opposite team] right over”, or “Red rover, red rover, let [player on opposite team] come over”, or even “Red rover, red rover, I call [player on opposite team] over”.

The immediate goal for the person called is to run to the other line and break the “East” team’s chain (formed by the linking of hands). If the player called fails to break the chain, they join the “East” team. However, if the player successfully breaks the chain, they may select either of the two “links” broken by the successful run, and take them to join the “West” team. The “West” team then calls out “Red rover” for a player on the “East” team, and play continues. The game needs five people to play at least, although this would be a very short game.

When only one player is left on a team, they also must try and break through a link. If they do not succeed, then the opposing team wins. Otherwise, they are able to get a player back for their team.  This game favors the bigger kids and I remember running with all my might and trying to break apart the hands of two of the kids on the opposing team.   Most of time with success but some times I would be stopped…when you are the youngest of five kids that is hard to live down. 

Those days seemed so magical, we would play games, have our meeting and someone would present a program and then end the night with kool-aid and snacks, usually cookies.  We were all country kids and had grown up together, knew each others families and would only go to town for school and shopping.  The summers were our time with everything leading up to the fall fair…when we would show our animals, cooking items and the all manners of projects.